As 2015 comes to a close, GITA would like to wish its members, partners and other industry professionals a safe and happy holiday season. As we reflect on the past year for the industry, we would like to provide the readers of GITA News Hub a look at the most accessed articles from the year. Our regular publication will resume Wednesday, Jan. 6.

GISCIFrom Feb. 26: Changes to GISCI's GISP Certification are on the way!
The GISCI Board is pleased to announce the long-anticipated changes to the GISP certification process that were decided during the first meeting of 2015. These changes affect both current and future GISP certification holders and were made in order to increase the value, recognition and long term viability of the GISP certification and the GISCI organization.READ MORE

CoreLogicAs a GIS professional, you understand that robust and quality data is at the heart of every business decision including land-use planning, mineral exploration, tax compliance, transportation, as well as infrastructure development and management. However, collecting data from various local government and other resources can be expensive, time-consuming and error-prone. Sadly identifying a single and trusted provider of quality data is not always easy. Until now.READ MORE

GPS WorldFrom Aug. 19: An Aug. 18 Federal Register notice proposes shutting down the Nationwide Differential Global Positioning System in January 2016 because of a decline in its use, except for sites in coastal areas.
The notice, issued by the U.S. Coast Guard, Transportation Department and Corps of Engineers, reads ...READ MORE

Directions MagazineFrom Nov. 18: Today, people around the world are celebrating GIS Day. Since 1999, this distinction has been given to the Wednesday of Geography Awareness Week, which itself has been observed the third week of November for more than 25 years, supported by National Geographic. According to its official webpage, GIS Day "provides an international forum for users of geographic information systems technology to demonstrate real-world applications that are making a difference in our society."READ MORE

The AtlanticFrom Oct. 7: In 1996, Peter Childers and his wife, Victoria, started to build a new home on the two-acre lot they'd purchased in Orange County, North Carolina, the affluent jurisdiction that includes the University of North Carolina's flagship Chapel Hill campus.
Or rather, they thought it was Orange County. That's what it said on the building permit they received, and where they would be paying their property taxes.READ MORE

Inside GNSSFrom June 3: Work to integrate drones into the nation's regular air traffic picked up speed over the last eight months as aviation regulators found new ways to permit unmanned flights while still keeping the skies safe for other aircraft.
In September 2014 the agency announced the first of what is now more than 450 waivers enabling commercial companies to begin for-profit operations in the United States.READ MORE

Sensors & SystemsFrom Sept. 17: This question is spurred by the Denver-based meetup Geospatial Amateurs as "GIS without GIS" is the theme of their gathering this week. They have two presentations of compelling geospatial analysis use cases, with one using R in RStudio and the other Jupyter Notebooks. One of these is a statistical desktop package that includes spatial analysis, and the other is a cloud-based data and analysis sharing environment.READ MORE

Directions Magazine From May 21: When Google announced in December that it would withdraw support for its Google Earth browser plug-in in one year's time, then in January stated that Google Maps Engine API would follow into the company's archives, and subsequently in February communicated that there would be key changes to the Google Earth Enterprise product sales and support model, there was understandably a ripple effect in the geospatial industry as various GIS companies looked at how to address a future opportunity.READ MORE

Smart Grid NewsFrom Aug. 26: Although numerous cities in the United States are implementing smart technology, the country as a whole continues to fall behind others in terms of smart city rollouts. The National Geographic Channel featured San Diego in their Smart Cities series — but it was the only United States city to be highlighted.
Is the United States really that far behind Europe?READ MORE

The Washington PostFrom Oct. 14: As rapid change and urbanization redraw the world, someone must refresh our maps so that the two-dimensional pictures that give us a common sense of where we live reflect the dynamic, shape-shifting places around us.
Quite literally, this is how the U.S. government keeps track of such change: The little-known, 125-year-old U.S. Board on Geographic Names maintains a single repository of the definitive name and location of nearly every significant feature worth mapping in the United States, as well as another database of foreign places.READ MORE

Discovery NewsFrom Jan. 22: Before the early 1800s, people probably didn't think that much about what was under the ground upon they walked. But in 1815, a British surveyor, canal engineer and fossil enthusiast named William Smith helped change all that. Smith published "A Geological Map of England and Wale and Part of Scotland." On a scale of 5 miles per inch, the map measured 6 feet by 8 feet 6 inches.READ MORE